I was doing a bit of quick surfing early this morning when I happened across a very interesting ad on CNN.com

Now, we’re all familiar with Apple’s TV ads that mock the boring, broken down, and pathetic PC, and I’ve seen the same video ads on various sites sites before. But what I saw on CNN was a lot more sophisticated.

These types of video ads may have very likely been out for quite some time now, but it’s the first time I’ve personally seen one.

The ad consists of two different ad sections on the site both loading in sync and communicating to each other. The “Mac” is shown at the top ad, and the “PC” on the right side, and they continue to talk to each other in another example of a successful and funny Apple ad.

In case CNN.com is geotargeting the ad, only running it at certain times of day, or just isn’t running the ad anymore, here’s a quick screencast I made of it:

Taking a quick look at the HTML, it appears that the top 966×110 embedded flash ad is indeed separate from the right side 336×600 flash ad.

While the technological significance of this is nothing new, it’s nice to see more sophisticated advertising on the web. Hollywood’s marketing companies have been taking advantage of the creative aspects of the Internet for some time now with interesting rich-media/flash ads that would be designed around the particular movie being advertised.

While these ads can be annoying at times, they typically honour the [close] link and/or only display once every 24 hours with the use of a cookie. The Apple ad on CNN above, while playing the video portion automatically, has the audio off by default for those who may be viewing the site at work.

I don’t know – I just saw the ad and really enjoyed it. I love it when, as a consumer, my intelligence is respected or I’m simply confronted with more creative forms of advertising.

29 Responses to “Apple’s I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC ad on CNN.com”

I don’t know if they’ve used any new technology to put this add together, other than creativity.

I’d be surprised if the flash documents communicate in anyway, and would put my money on they just synced them time wise. Kind of like the old answering machine joke, where you record your message saying “Hello?” “Hah, you thought I was here didn’t you, but I’m not…so leave a message.”

When I first saw the Microsoft commercial, I was like “oh Jerry Seinfield is doing a new TV show. Wait. Is this an ad for churros? Is this a shoe commercial? Wait it’s a Microsoft commercial.” I think it was suppose to be confusing, so people would talk about it. Whether it was a bad commercial or not, we’re all talking about it now. Props to Microsoft on this one.

This is another example of great advertising by Apple. Have you seen the new Microsoft advert with Bill Gates in? It is trying to take Microsoft away from the view that they’re a boring company. It does the opposite.

They spent $10m out of the $300m marketing budget and failed to pull it off. It is dulllll

Some people feel that there is no such thing as bad press, and that’s true. The only thing that’s bad is how the company responds to that bad press. One person’s bad press is another person’s marketing opportunity.

That was a great ad! I haven’t seen anything like that before–separate banners that work in conjunction with one another. That sort of genius, could only come from Mac. Quite a few of us, myself included, are big Mac fans here at MarketLeverage. Thanks for posting, Tyler!

Apple have always stood for innovation and technological advances that other people simply haven’t spotted. Apple seem to have a fresh outlook on products and advertising. Although I admit alot of them seem rather cliched, most of them make me smile, and if I feel amicable towards the brand then I’m mroe likely to buy the product, so it works!

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